New House, New Dogs, New Neighbourhood

After 8 months of rigorous exercise and an enthusiastic return to riding his bike, Roger raced out to rake the leaves in the gutter preparatory to leaving our sit with Long and Short, and hurt his back.  In as long as it took to say "Ouch!" he was flat on his back in bed, surfacing from a drug-and-pain-induced haze only to think of more things that needed to be done in the narrow overlap of time between starting one sit and ending another. And we thought we were so smart having them end and start on the same day: turns out it's better to have a buffer of a few days in between to accommodate such inconveniences as bad backs and one person having to do two person's work.

I collected two weary house owners from the airport and delivered them to two rapturous dogs.  Then I collected my fragile husband and we drove up the hill to two dogs who were not at all rapturous to see us and had to be bribed with bones to stop them barking.

As the evening came on they were easily coaxed with treats and blankets.

I keep expecting them to purr.

 In the morning I let the dogs out for a spot of grass time and drank my first cup of tea while the sun came up. 

Not a bad way to start the day.

In the evening I went for a walk around the neighbourhood.  I didn't take the dogs: the combination of a large block and very short legs meant that they got quite enough exercise just running around outside and chasing rabbits in the garden.  Just around the corner from our house an old stone shed occupied a hilltop in suburbia, sheep grazing quietly around the ruin.

Back at the house Roger retired to the bedroom on a regular basis to rest his back.  The dogs, being of small brain, quite forgot he was there and went through paroxysms of terror every time they discovered a strange man walking down their hall.

Oh no!  An intruder!

Mind you, all the barking and carrying on each time only lasted as long as it took him to bring out the treats and wave the cuddly blanket around.  They're easily bought, these dogs.

But cute.  Easily bought but cute.